In industry nowadays, success or failure depends in part upon knowing up to date status of various company assets. For example, in the freight delivery business up to date knowledge of the location and, in some instances, the environment of various assets is critical to efficient and reliable operations. Failure to maintain up to date status information can result in temporarily lost assets, sub-optimal use of the assets, and in the case of freight delivery, missed or late deliveries.
Recently, technologies have been developed that greatly assist in tracking locations of assets. For example, global positioning systems (GPS) use wireless signals transmitted by earth-orbit satellites to calculate the position of a receiving device. Although relatively expensive, GPS receivers are capable of providing relatively accurate location information for virtually any point in the world.
More recently, radio frequency identification (RFID) systems have been developed in which “tags” wirelessly communicate with readers. Generally speaking, tags may be either passive or active. Passive tags absorb signals transmitted by the readers and retransmit their own signals, which signals include information identifying a particular tag. While passive tags do not require a local power source, their resulting transmit range is relatively short, typically on the order of a few centimeters, up to 1-2 meters. In contrast, active tags include a local energy source such that their transmit range is extended, typically on the order of several meters. Regardless of the types of tags used, knowledge of the fixed location of the reader devices enables system users to likewise ascertain the location of assets that have tags attached thereto. Currently, RFID systems are typically used in parcel tracking and sorting, container tracking, luggage tracking, retail tracking, warehouse tracking and inventory operations.
While GPS and RFID technologies greatly assist in the task of asset tracking, they do not by themselves provide a total solution to the problem of asset tracking. That is, these technologies, by themselves, do not present the location data in a particularly useful way, nor do they automatically evaluate such data in accordance with industry-specific rules or procedures. To this end, various companies have begun providing solutions which address the larger business issues associated with asset tracking. For example, WhereNet Corp. and Savi Technologies provide so-called yard management systems or solutions. While the systems provided by these companies are believed to provide an interface for observing location information, a need still exists for a status tracking system that not only provides an interface for monitoring real-time status information, but that also integrates with business legacy systems and, perhaps more significantly, integrates business intelligence so as to obtain the maximum value from the status data being obtained.